Like the Boudinot and Ridge murders I wrote about last week, the Goingsnake gunfight that left eleven people dead near Christie, Oklahoma, in April of 1872, is something I've previously written about on this blog. However, since one of the chapters in my new book, Murder and Mayhem in Northeast Oklahoma https://amzn.to/4fbdFhZ, is devoted to the gunfight, I'm going to summarize the event again.
Exactly what happened is a matter of dispute to this day, because the two
sides involved in the gunfight, Cherokee tribal members and the US Marshals
Service, told markedly different stories. What we know for sure is that Ezekial
"Zeke" Proctor, a member of the Cherokee tribe, was scheduled for
trial in the Goingsnake District of the Cherokee Nation on April 15 on a charge
of having killed Polly Beck two months earlier.
Polly, who was married to a white man named Kesterson, was also a member
of the Cherokee tribe, but a combination of family and tribal resentments had
cast her and Proctor on opposite sides. Polly's family had sided with the
Treaty Party (see last week's post) over thirty years earlier when the tribal
members were removed from their homelands in the Southeast to present-day
Oklahoma, whereas Proctor's family had sided with the Anti-Treaty Party. Also,
Kesterson had previously been married to Proctor's sister, and Proctor
reportedly blamed him for the breakup of the marriage.
Most important, perhaps, was a jurisdictional dispute between Proctor and
his allies on one side and Polly's family and friends on the other. After
Proctor killed Polly and wounded Kesterson, Kesterson had journeyed to Fort
Smith to enlist U.S. authorities in the matter, while Proctor and his allies
felt strongly that the matter should be left to Cherokee tribal
authority. The US Marshals Service now claimed jurisdiction in the assault
on Kesterson, but the Cherokee Nation considered Kesterson an adopted citizen
and resented any interference in the matter by the US government.
On the day of Proctor's trial for the murder of Polly Beck, a party of
deputy marshals, along with some of Polly's kinsmen, showed up with the avowed
intention of arresting Proctor on the assault charge, should he be acquitted on
the murder charge. As I say, exactly what happened next is a matter of dispute,
but a gunfight broke out almost immediately, and when the shooting ceased, nine
men lay dead, two mortally wounded, and several others suffering wounds of
varying severity. Most of the fatalities (seven or eight) were deputy
marshals.
Even what to call this incident has been a matter of disagreement over
the years. In the immediate aftermath of the incident, reports from the deputy
marshals called it a massacre, and the white press adopted that terminology.
So, for many years, the incident was known in popular culture as the Goingsnake
Massacre. More recently, the term Goingsnake Tragedy has been suggested as a
more objective term.
